Invitational Week #5 - What a "Novel" Idea!

This week we have been spending time with NoveList and NoveList Plus. Because I teach middle school, I spent most of my time looking around NoveList K-8.
Our first "task" requested that we search a series and then see how we might use the "view" box to help with finding books. I searched the Percy Jackson series as it is very popular with my seventh graders. When the search showed me several of the Percy Jackson books, I "played around" with the different views possible when looking for book titles. Personally I like the detailed view. When I look for a book, I like to have a summary of the story to see if it would appeal to me. As I looked over other information on each of the views, however, a couple things "popped out" at me. One was the fact that you can get more information about the book, information like genre, setting of the story, types of characters in the story... As a teacher I think this could help when looking for books for my students or having them look for books for themselves. The other "cool" part of my series search was finding "Series Read Alikes." Wow! This directed me to several series/books that are like the Percy Jackson books. What a help this would be when working with a student who loves a series but has read all the books in that specific series! A teacher could direct the student to other series with similar characteristics. A definite "plus" in my eyes.
The second task followed along with what I had discovered during my first task. We were asked to find  authors whose writing was similar to David Baldacci's writing by looking at the "Read-alikes from NoveList" section on the page. Again this would be helpful when a student loves a certain author and we have exhausted the local supply of reading materials from that author.
I spent a great deal of time browsing the database. Something I really liked was the "Grab and Go Book Lists" capability. I am always looking for books to read aloud to my students or books to recommend. The lists would be very handy! As a teacher I would use the detailed view. I know my students would use the grid view when browsing the Grab and Go Book Lists. Middle Schoolers are usually first attracted to a book by the cover. They could browse through the books on the grid and if a cover caught their eye, the student could click on the title to get more information about the story itself. I can see this as a very helpful tool for my students when they are trying to find books. I could see these lists as helpful for me to collect books for my class library or just to supply titles for students to try. The fact that the lists can be printed is great! I was interested in the book discussion guides. It took me awhile to get to these, but I did eventually find them. (I should have used the bar at the top of the page!) Most of the books/authors did not apply to my grade level, but the information I found was interesting and seemed easy to use.
I was interested to get into NoveList and enjoyed the time spent on the site. I will definitely use NoveList and take some time showing my students how this could be really helpful to them when looking for books.